Glenmont station to increase parking spots for commuters by 67 percent

Garage to increase parking by 67 percent; some lament lack of voice in planning

Glenmont Station commuters can look forward to less hassle when they park upon completion of a new garage in about a year.

Construction began Monday on a 1,200-space garage on the corner of Urbana Drive and Georgia Avenue that will ease the parking crunch at the station, which is slated to open in early 2012. The six-story garage will bump up the total number of parking spaces at the station by 67 percent to 3,000.

The garage costs $24.7 million and will be paid for by earnings from parking fees collected at Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority facilities in Montgomery County and county bonds, said Gary Erenrich, special assistant to the director with the Montgomery County Department of Transportation. The state contributed an additional $1.6 million for design costs.

Additional parking spaces are much needed at the Glenmont Station.

"It's one of the few garages in the system that there is still a waiting list," Erenrich said.

The existing garage is full most weekdays before 8 a.m., and more than 700 people are on a waiting list to buy one of the 180 reserved parking spaces there, said Patrick Schmitt, the senior traffic engineer for the parking division at WMATA in April.

Construction of the garage should not affect the daily commute, with the exception of the closing of a Kiss-and-Ride lot on the west side of Georgia Avenue. The east-side lot will stay open.

But some Glenmont residents worry the garage will bring more traffic and air pollution to the area, said Rose Alvarez, president of the Greater Glenmont Civic Association. Though the garage is a necessity, it does not offer many benefits to the community, she said.

"We would have preferred that it be part of a redevelopment plan for the intersection of Randolph [Road] and Georgia [Avenue] that would increase livable spaces; green spaces have a better use for commercial real estate," Alvarez said. "Because then it would have added some value to our community and be a benefit for people who live in the community and those coming in to use the parking."

Glenmont is an underserved population, Alvarez said, and it lacks a strong voice that could express more resistance to such projects as the garage. Somewhere down the line, the community would like to see added green spaces and places for families to gather, she said.

The Montgomery County Planning Board approved the forest-conservation plan for the garage in April, although the project will destroy more than one acre of trees on the 10-acre plot of land. WMATA must plant two acres of trees somewhere else in the county to make up for the one acre  including seven large trees  the garage will pave over, according to the plan. WMATA also is required to create a minimum of 50 feet of forest buffering an adjacent Glenmont neighborhood from the garage.

Shady Grove, another end-of-the-line Metrorail station in the county, has 5,745 all-day spaces and 76 short-term metered spaces, according to Metro.